Next Up: Jerry Bruckheimer on Defense Policy

As part of his ongoing attempts to defy parody, Senate Environment Committee chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.) convened a hearing yesterday on climate science, featuring as an “expert” witness … a novelist. Yup, it was Michael Crichton, whose latest thriller State of Fear casts global warming as a sinister environmentalist conspiracy. Inhofe, who has called warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” gushed that he was “excited about this hearing,” that he had “read most of [Crichton’s] books,” and that “Dr. Crichton’s science background has served him well.” (Crichton has a medical degree but has never practiced medicine — and, oh yeah, has no background in climate science.) Crichton was treated like a celeb by the committee’s star-struck Republicans, but non-Republican members were bewildered. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said the hearing had been “organized in a way to muddy sound science rather than clarify it.” You think?